Plans proposed by London’s new mayor Boris Johnson to create a detailed crime map of the city have stalled because of legal concerns.

The Conservative party’s agenda to make data more widely available has raised concerns with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which says releasing such information could breach data protection laws.

The Royal Chartered Institute of Surveyors has also expressed fears that publishing a crime map could affect house prices.

Unless they propose to publish the names and addresses of crime victims, surely what is proposed is no more than an accumulation of information which is already in the public domain via national and local news agencies, and local police initiatives.

Still you can see why it would be popular with any government – just sit back and watch those house prices drop, then bung all the ‘key workers’ in there – and hand the brownfield set aside for social housing over to casino developers…

http://spotcrime.com Colin

agreed. Privacy is an serious issue, however, the police are already practiced in carefully giving out information.

Our experience at Spotcrime.com in the US is that the data has been pre-scrubbed for privacy issues.

Ultimately, we are just requesting the right to aggregate the data on a map.